Jinxed

This weekend I've decided to journey out of Wisconsin and travel through Illinois to visit Cahokia. Cahokia is an archaeological site near Saint Louis and it has the biggest mound north of Mexico. The site itself is pretty massive, the main feature being Monks Mound with a series of surrounding mounds, barrier fences, and a circle of logs called wood henge. After hiking around the mounds today I'm relaxing in a hotel. Tomorrow I will get up bright and early to go back out to check out the interpretation center and spend some more time hiking around the mounds. This is particularly interesting to me because I just learned about Cahokia in my Archaeology class and now I get to see it in person.

My mom and I were hanging out this evening and she wanted to show me the digital frame she had put together for her parents. She has gathered up family pictures, more than 100 of them, to put on the frame. Some of them are the standard pictures of people standing in front of a Christmas tree, at weddings and graduations, etc. Most of them are pictures I've seen before and even pictures I was in. But some of them were pictures that I hadn't seen before. My mom had found and scanned a number of black and white pictures of when she was little and even when my grandparents were little. These are amazing pictures, snap shots of my mom as an infant being held by her father who must have been younger than I am now.

I started harassing my dad about it and he produced a thumb drive of gathered pictures from his side of the family. Black and white pictures of my grandpa in the military and my grandmas first communion. My fathers side of the family has many more formal, severe, posed pictures but the pictures are much more organized and a wider range of family members. Unfortunately because my father was the youngest child there are very few pictures of him and when there are he is one of many. But through all of that I was reminded of the fact that his father had written a book in my childhood detailing the history of that side of the family.

I suddenly feel that it is very important to preserve all of these pictures, to keep the history of my family safe. With the internet these days I can upload the pictures to Flickr in digital form and keep them safe there. Now I can even print off new copies to show future generations.

This week is painfully long and today was just the beginning. Today was an oral presentation and exam for Archaeology. Tomorrow is a listening quiz for Spanish and an exam for Statistics. Then off to work. Wednesday is an exam and an oral presentation for Spanish. Thursday school starts at 8:30 am and work goes until 9:15. Friday should be smooth sailing.

Tired of your rights as a member of the living dead being violated? Sick of people putting you down or worse, screaming and trying to smash your head with a cricket bat? We don't deserve to be treated like this! We will no longer stand for being viewed as lesser citizens. We need to fight for our rights and demand equal treatment.

The Coalition Of the Living Dead (COLD) will gather on Saturday October 24th at 2:00 pm at the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, and lurch for our rights as zombies. COLD encourages zombies and zombie supporters to come equipped with signs and slogans to make our point. We will raise our voices and we will not be ignored. We will lurch from the capitol down State Street to the Memorial Union.

Help our support numbers grow! please post this message on your blog, email it to your friends and bring as many people to the lurch as you can. Feel free to bring your family, children and friendly dogs to march with us for our rights.

devianttouch and I decided we needed some time to ourselves so we went to Chicago last weekend. We had a really fantastic time running amok through the city.

We showed up Saturday morning and after getting lost for a while we made it to the Shedd Aquarium. We spent the day there, waiting in line to get inside and the cramming in shoulder to shoulder with everyone else we got to see all sorts of fantastic fishes and sea life. I took massive amounts of pictures and we left exhausted and happy.

Sunday morning we got up bright and early and headed over to the Brookfield Zoo despite the sweltering weather. We got there as soon as it opened and for much of the morning had the zoo sort of to ourselves. We spent hours and hours at the zoo, wandering back and forth, taking lots of pictures. After being there for more than 6 hours we still hadn't see the whole thing but we were too tired and way way too hot to keep it up. After cooling showers and some relaxing, we got together with ofnewhorizons and Chicago Paul for dinner. We went back to the hotel and chatted and hung out which was nice.

Monday we woke up, had a leisurely breakfast and then headed back to Madison.

I got a new set of macro filters for my camera and took them over to Olbrich Gardens for their butterfly expo. Considering the cost difference between an actual macro lens and the filters, I'm pretty happy with the results.


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Some random person gave me fresh cat nip today and I promptly brought it home and gave some to Tegan, my poofy Maine Coon. Now I am enjoying her rolling, flinching, twitching, and pawing.

Good and bad. Up and down. Back and forth. Makes me dizzy.

The rain is falling gently, the wind is blowing through the window, and I am a content girl.

Squee!

I'm really enjoying cooking and I have found that doing it without recipes is the most satisfying. Today I made squash soup without a recipe and it turned out pretty well. I think it would probably have a better texture if I had a food processor to blend the squash down better. But it was pretty freakin' tasty and totally worth slaving over a hot stove for as long as I did.

I love my puppy, he was such a good boy today.

On Friday May 29th we are going to be having a summer cook out at our place. We will be serving things up pot luck style so we ask that you bring a dish to pass and we will supply grills, a fire pit, and some fun. We will get things started around 6:00 pm and go late into the night with the fun. This is a totally family friendly party so bring your kids.

If you have questions about where we live or something else please email me at XJadedIvyX at yahoo

So, we are looking for a pet sitter from Thursday of this week to Monday. This would include coming over to let out the dog a couple times a day (hanging out here to spend time with the dog would also be totally awesome) and feed both the cats and the dog and scoop the cat box once or twice. You would be welcome to have full run of the house, use of electronics, you would even be welcome to sleep here if you would like. We would be willing to pay 20 dollars a day for this fantastic assistance. Please contact me ASAP if you can do this for us.

Your results:
You are James T. Kirk (Captain)

James T. Kirk (Captain) 75% Will Riker 70% Chekov 60% Geordi LaForge 50% Jean-Luc Picard 45% Beverly Crusher 45% Deanna Troi 45% Mr. Sulu 40% Spock 35% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 35% Mr. Scott 35% Uhura 35% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 35% Worf 30% Data 25%

You are often exaggerated and over-the-top in your speech and expressions. You are a romantic at heart and a natural leader.

Click here to take the "Which Star Trek character am I?" quiz...

I totally want to wear this in grad school and get all the nerds.

I feel like I'm broken. About a week ago my back started hurting really bad, the right shoulder up through the neck. It hurts when I breathe, when I turn my head, when I try to sit up or lay down. It has made concentrating at school and work totally impossible and driving (checking my blind spot) bordering on dangerous. In the past week I have tried a series of things to help, taking extra hot showers, ibuprofen, bio freeze, massage etc. I went to urgent care last night instead of going to work and I received muscle relaxants, figuring that would help. They don't appear to do anything, not anything at all. I took some last night to very little affect and had a difficult time sleeping because every time I moved the pain jolted me awake. Now I am laying as still as I can on the couch, trying to do my best not to move or breathe too deep. I'm not sure what I'm going to do or how I'm going to fix it.

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I just cleaned out the fridge, totally cleaned, completely took everything out and replaced only the good food. We had a lot of old food. We had a lot of gross, moldy food. We now have a very very clean fridge with only good, edible food. I wonder how long it will last.

Today I feel like I'm running in circles. No one is at fault, just things working at odds with each other. It's making me feel strained and stressed. But I'll get over it and things will get better.